Cutler Hammer QO vs CH box

I've been planing on purchasing the QO box. However I now see the CH box that has surge protection built in. I don't know if it is really the same box as the QO with just surge protection added or if there are other differences.

Recently installed one of those... normally don't use CH, but homeowner works for Eaton and he supplied it. Pretty slick setup. Easy to replace the surge module if necessary, but don't know the $$ of a replacement.

__________________"Life is hard. Life is harder when you're stupid." John Wayne

Loadcenter

Bought a CHSUR42B200L2 today from Yesco for my Parents home. It is meant to replace their current Federal box. Service from the Poco in this area is constantly causing surges that have damaged components in the house on occasion.

Service from the Poco in this area is constantly causing surges that have damaged components in the house on occasion.

If it's not lightning, surge protectors won't help.
Electricians in my building put something over 120v into our outlets for quite a while and fried every computer surge protector on the floor, pretty well stinking up the place.
A surge is "short duration" and the standard lightning strike current waveform is about 30 ÁSec long to the half-peak value.

It could also be a bad neutral.

You might ask that PoCo install a recording voltmeter at the place for a week and show you the graph.

That's pretty good. Here's spec's on Florida's PoCo protection, and they get a lot of strikes.
4000 joules, total
80,000 amps, max
Insurance, $5k per item
$9/mon for this thing gives you a 10 yr warranty and the
design lifetime = 10 yrs.

Assuming the FL PoCo makes 7%/yr [0.6%/mon] on their money, using the Present Value of an Annuity formula,
"If you were to receive $9.00 every . . .[month] . . .for the next 120 [months], and you continually reinvested this amount at a rate of 0.6%, the total series of cash flows at the end of the annuity's life would be worth $768.30 today."

Some of this ~$800 goes into insurance for the items wrecked despite the protection, some for the device and some goes into PoCo's installation cost.